


Head Over Heels

by Peaterparker



Series: If You Wanna Find Hell With Me [5]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Dreams, M/M, Steve dreams about this party a loooot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 19:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21481414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peaterparker/pseuds/Peaterparker
Summary: a small spoiler for the main plot in the end, I'm so sorry. It was easier to work on this than the main piece, but it will be updated shortly.Incredibly and unapologetically inspired by Head Over Heels by Tears For Fears.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: If You Wanna Find Hell With Me [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1530518
Kudos: 12





	Head Over Heels

**Author's Note:**

> a small spoiler for the main plot in the end, I'm so sorry. It was easier to work on this than the main piece, but it will be updated shortly. 
> 
> Incredibly and unapologetically inspired by Head Over Heels by Tears For Fears.

He’s dreaming, that much is fact. He’s dreaming of the party again, Nancy long gone and Billy nowhere in sight. The same Tears For Fears song has repeated five times already as he’s walking through the party. Shelly McCormick is there, still, holding a cup out to him with her gigantic smile and molten eyes. Tommy is walking in from outside whooping, still no Billy around, and he shoves his shoulder into Steve’s as he passes to the kitchen. Steve goes through the slider doors and looks out at the crowd around the keg. Keg King Billy isn’t there and Steve gets this weird anxious swoop in his stomach. He’s thought, plenty of times, how different his life would be if Billy just hadn’t gone to this party. If Billy never flaunted himself, leather jacket wide open and showing off golden skin that would probably taste like sunshine if you licked it. 

He’s dreaming. That’s the only way he can explain thinking (think-dreaming?) about licking Billy. The same Tears For Fears song comes on again, it jolts Steve when the beat comes in and the front door opens but it’s not Billy. It’s the Mind Flayer, standing just beyond the driveway but above the trees, red and blue and purple flashing around it with lightning spearing the sky behind. The wind picks up, moves Steve’s hair across his eyes for a second too long and the door closes, Flayer trapped outside. 

The same Tears For Fears song again and Steve thinks he’s going to hate this band for the rest of his life, which is such a shame. He feels like he’s drank too much and the room is spinning. The cold air outside does nothing to ease his head, so he attempts the stairs. He’s made it to the second landing, bathroom door open and room glowing gold with the light. Staggering inside he lands his hands on the counter but his knees give out. 

“Woah, woah, woah, Stevie, you gotta be careful, man.” 

“Where th’fuck have you been?” He wishes he wasn’t excited to see Billy, wishes Billy didn’t look so fucking good in his fingerless gloves and open leather jacket and the scarring on his chest glowing in the light. His hair cropped short, makes his ears stick out but he’s so fucking cute that it’s endearing.

In this dream Billy’s never had scarring on his chest before. His hair was always the same, long and frizzy and blonde. He never followed Steve to the bathroom, or found him there he guesses. Never called him ‘Stevie’. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Steve asks, he knows his eyes are wide and panicked, he knows that Billy’s furrowing his brow to ask the same question. “Why is this song still fucking playing?!” 

“You’re just, just, just wasting time.” Billy croons along. 

“Cute, Hargrove, but cut the shit. What the hell is going on?” Steve stands, dusts his knees like he actually dirtied himself and then makes his way over to the small window above the shower. He can see the Mind Flayer, it looks like it’s pacing around the house. Like it knows Billy and Steve are in it and it’s playing a waiting game. “Did that thing follow you here?”

“I was already here, Steve. It showed up shortly after you did.” 

“So you hid in the bathroom?” 

“Don’t play dumb, Stevie. I went to where you wanted to find me.” Billy sighs, looks around and then shoves himself to sit on the counter. He looks tired, kinda on an edge. 

“What does that mean?”

“Whatever you think it does.” He sounds exhausted now, like hiding in this bathroom with Steve is taking up more energy than he can produce. 

“Why the fuck are you talking in circles?” The song kicks over and Steve groans, puts his head in his hands. “Why is this fucking happening?” 

“It’s your dream. You can control it.” Billy reminds him, sounding bored. “I can’t find any answers to the questions you already know the answers to.” 

Steve sits down in the tub, leans his head back against the pink tile, and closes his eyes. He focuses on his breathing, rubs his palms into his closed eyes until little black dots follow his vision after. When he looks at Billy again there’s a black spot under his ear and the veins surrounding are bulging out as the black rapidly takes them over.

“Billy?” 

“Why you dreaming ‘bout this, Harrington?” He asks, voice full of fear and his eyes widening. He jumps off the counter and faces himself in the mirror. “What the fuck.” He whispers, panic more and more evident in the way his fingers shake when he starts poking at his neck. 

“I don’t-- I don’t know, what the hell is going on?” He grips his hair right at the roots and tugs while he stares Billy down. The same Tears For Fears song kicks over again in the house. Steve thinks he’s actually going to fucking go insane. 

“Steve--” Billy chokes out, hands clenching on air. He takes a couple deep breaths. “Maybe, uh, maybe if we leave the party your dream will change?” 

Steve really has to give him props for being able to focus outside of the pit full of dread they’re both tumbling head over heels into. Fuck, Steve for sure will never like Tears For Fears ever again. Billy’s breathing is haggard, loud and rough through the echo of the music. Steve tumbles over the edge of the lip of the tub, barely gets his feet under himself before grabbing Billy’s wrist and tugging him out of the bathroom behind. The ending beats of the song face out and seemingly louder than ever before it starts up again.

“I wanted to be with you alone and talk about the weather” jumps around Steve’s head as he takes the stairs down. Billy is hot on his heels, their shoulders crashing when they finally make it to the ground level. Steve’s got a death grip on his wrist, allows his fingers to relax minutely when Billy wiggles his arm but doesn’t let him pull away. 

Everyone in the house is frozen in time, it seems. Shelly McCormick is just outside of the hall, holding out a shot glass to Jake Branson. Both their hands are up and faces cracked open with smiles while people are stuck with their mouths open in cheers, bodies paused in awkward dancing positions in the living room. The house feels like it should be quiet enough to hear a pin drop, like everyone stopped what they were doing right before Hopper’s deputies were going to come bursting in. 

The music gets even louder when Billy nudges him towards the sliding glass doors. It trips Steve up, the music getting louder, Billy right behind him, the bodies frozen all over the house. His heart is pounding, meshing into the beat of the song playing around his ears, he can’t stop blinking fast like he’s afraid if he takes a slow blink he’ll close his eyes and everything will turn to shit again. 

He makes it three steps outside before he’s scrambling to push Billy back inside and lock the door after he slams it back into the track. He pokes his head through the blinds and watches the ash floating in the air, sees the way everything has gone deathly still outside around the people frozen in front of the keg. Billy sucks his teeth right behind Steve and it makes his shoulders jump up under his ears. The Upside Down has swallowed the party whole. 

“We’re fucked, we’re so fucked.” Steve whispers. 

“It’s just a dream, Stevie Wonder.” Billy hisses. “You can fuckin’ change this, man, what the hell.” 

Steve takes a deep breath and allows his eyes to slip shut. He’s done this before, thought about something else and allowed the swooping feeling in his stomach to change the scene in the dream around them. He’s focussing on the basement in the bunker they’re living out of in Illinois. He’s thinking about the blankets, how warm they always kept him, thinking about curling up in a ball in the center of the small mattress and keeping his head down for the rest of his life.

He opens his eyes and the same Tears For Fears song starts over, even louder. The lights flicker. He wonders if this really is a dream or if time travel has suddenly become something else controlled by the Upside Down. He slips his eyes closed but his breathing is erratic.

“Focus.” Billy says sharply, hand on his neck but the black is gone and is replaced by a silver white starburst of a scar.

“I fucking am, man!” Steve snaps. “I’ve tried, three times now, to get us the fuck out of here. It’s-- it’s not working.” His voice escalates over the music, Billy jerks away from the glass doors and sighs heavily, chest moving with the motions. 

Steve realizes he’s still holding onto Billy when he brings the hand clenched around Billy’s wrist up to run through his own hair. He drops both their hands and avoids meeting Billy’s eyes when he glances around the room again. Nothing has changed, there’s no new faces from the ones that were already dancing in the living room. Steve tries to remember where Nancy had been after he left her in the bathroom before he left entirely. He tries to remember where Jonathan had been hiding when he first came to the party.

“Where were you and Tommy at after you got in my face?” Steve asks, grips Billy’s shoulders to force him to look into his eyes. “Before I left the party, where were you and Tommy?” 

“Kitchen.” Billy says, dubious as to where Steve’s going with this. “We were takin’ shots, Carol and Karla got Jeremy to buy good tequila and you know how Tommy gets about clear liquor.” 

Steve snorts at the implication and bolts off, not waiting for the other man to follow him. He turns the corner, passing the closed bathroom door with only a wary side eye. Tommy’s frozen with a shot tipped to his lips, the liquid itself has even paused midway into his mouth. Steve doesn’t know why he thought finding Tommy would be better than looking for Nancy. He thinks maybe middle school him, the one with the braces and glasses, the one Tommy defended so many times, pushed him to do it. 

A broken sob cuts in the silence between the song ending and starting again. It’s almost painful to hear a noise like that coming from himself, he thinks he would’ve been embarrassed if anyone actually heard him. Billy comes in a second later and huffs a sigh, grabs the bottle of tequila and sips straight from it. Steve has no tears, no words, no emotions really. He feels cold, numb in the way that he would get following Tommy out in the woods right before sundown. He takes the bottle when it’s passed to him, chokes after swallowing and waves off Billy’s grunt of a laugh. 

“Your tolerance was so low, how are you straight sipping that right now?” 

“My tolerance wasn’t low at this party.” Billy replies. “I’m not-- look, I am exactly who you’re making me right now.” 

“That’s not how this has worked before.”

“I’m not asleep, Stevie Wonder.” Billy sighs, puts the bottle down. “I’m just lost again, remember?” 

The music stops and Steve wakes up in a Florida motel, the last thirty hours crumbling around him all over again.


End file.
